


a flame in two cupped hands

by newseptembers



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Canon Continuation, Canon Typical Violence In One Chapter, Dream Sharing, Established Relationship, Eventual Smut, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Force Bond (Star Wars), Gray Jedi, Handfasting, Hurt/Comfort, Leia Organa Lives, POV Alternating, Post-Canon, Post-Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Post-Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Pregnancy, Red String of Fate, Reylo Baby, Sharing a Bed, Soft Ben Solo, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Trailer, Weddings, reverse Anidala, very vague episode ix speculation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-25
Updated: 2019-11-08
Packaged: 2021-01-03 06:53:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21175247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/newseptembers/pseuds/newseptembers
Summary: Ben’s hand shakes as he extends his arm, the action so familiar. He’s constantly reaching for her — across star systems, across galaxies, across a burning room.— Eight times Ben and Rey sayI love you.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> hello!! this is my first attempt at a canonverse fic, and it's majorly cemented my view that the authors who write canonverse epics are talented beyond belief — i don't know how they do it. this is an eight-part fic, with each chapter being (as the summary says) a different time that rey and ben say they love one another. most chapters are set post tros, and the tags should clue you into some of the scenarios, but chapter two is set during, and this first chap is set post tlj!
> 
> title is from the margaret atwood poem [variations on the word sleep](https://poets.org/poem/variation-word-sleep)

It’s been weeks since he’s seen her. Months since Crait, when she shut the door of the Millenium Falcon in front of him and closed the connection between their minds for what he thought was the last time. He hasn’t felt anything from her since his last desperate attempt, kneeling in front of her in an abandoned mineshaft and calling to her through the force, watching as she was enveloped in a cloud of smoke. Rey has cut off the bond as if it never existed, and as a result his mind is wholly his own for the first time in living memory. 

The silence is harder to get used to than he expected. He spends hours meditating, cross-legged on the cold floor of his chamber, centering his churning mind and searching for the tranquillity that has always seemed so out of reach. With Rey it was within his grasp, her hand in his beside the glow of a fire; the universe uniting them as they stretched fingertips through light years of distance. The peace that he found in those stolen moments has never felt so far as it does now. 

Kylo Ren sits, inhales deeply, and closes his eyes. He has to focus. Thinking of Rey will only derail him. He is Supreme Leader, head of the First Order, in charge of thousands of souls aboard this Destroyer alone. He cannot afford distraction. 

But his thoughts turn to her more easily that he cares to admit. She’s in his head constantly; when he wakes, when he sleeps, when he sits at the head of a table filled with sycophants and traitors and listens as Hux’s plans for galactic domination are delivered with barely-concealed fanaticism. He can’t escape it. Every time he sits on his throne, his gaze drifts to the empty space beside him, a place carved out for a twin that was never built. 

Not even his bedroom is safe from the ghost of her presence. He barely sleeps, years spent tortured both by nightmares and the presence of Snoke in his head inuring him to nights where the best rest he gets is when he finally reaches the point in meditation where his mind goes completely, blessedly blank. His bed lies untouched, sheets unruffled, folded with military precision. Instead, he sits bare-chested and bare-footed, levitating his belongings and trying desperately to connect with the force without thinking of Rey — thinking of the alternate reality in which he _ does _ sleep, because he doesn’t go to bed alone. 

Between one breath and the next, all of the air is sucked out of the room and his belongings clatter to the floor, his saber landing with a cacophonous thud. He lost control. It happens more often than not lately, his thoughts too fractured for anything else. His head rings, ears buzzing like he’s underwater, and Kylo opens his eyes, ready to give up.

The vibration doesn’t go away. The force coils thick around him, deeper and richer than it feels when he’s alone, and his breath catches in his chest at what it could mean. 

Surely it’s impossible. She’s sealed herself off from him, from their bond, drawn a line in the sand that he’s been unable to cross despite his best efforts. He’s powerful enough to breach it, if he tried hard enough, threw his remaining morals to the wind, but she’s equally able to keep him out. 

When he turns, slowly, he’s already half-convinced himself that he’s imagined it all. The force is still a mystery to him, even after devoting more than half his life to its study, and the whims of the universe are far beyond his imagination. 

This, however, is not imaginary. Rey is here, in front of him, for the first time in months.

Asleep in his bed.

Sprawled across the expanse of his mattress, she lies on her back, hair strewn across her face. It’s the first time he’s seen it down, and it tangles round her shoulders, strands knotted together in what looks like the remnants of a plait. She looks younger, like this, forehead smooth and jaw slack. Kylo’s heart seizes at the thought that he did this, that his desire summoned her to him. His dreams of lying beside her made the force take action, and defenceless in sleep Rey is unable to maintain her shields. 

He approaches his bedside warily, footsteps as light as he can make them. The idea of Rey waking as he looms over her, the same way he did that night at the temple all those years ago with Luke, makes his stomach churn. He’s done enough damage already. He can’t wake her. 

She is not an elegant sleeper. Mouth open, she breathes heavily in the quiet of his chamber, not quite snoring but loud enough that he can hear her sigh. One hand comes up to rest against the bloom of her cheek and Kylo freezes at the foot of the bed.

“Ben,” she whispers, forehead creasing. Her voice is heavy with sleep and he has to strain to hear her, barely exhaling. Her arm stretches out as if she’s searching for something, fingertips brushing against his sheets, and Kylo’s heart stops. 

“Ben,” Rey repeats, moving her hand like she’s grasping for something just out of reach. “Please don’t do this. I love you.”

He stumbles back like he’s taken a blaster bolt to the chest. 

She’s dreaming of him. His thoughts alone have never been enough to make the bond flare to life, but her lowered guard and sleeping mind have conspired against her, allowing the force to connect them. 

She says she loves him. She must be living out a fantasy, imagining a life where they are no longer on opposite sides of the war. If she loves him, why did she leave him? He offered her the galaxy — offered her a place by his side, offered her everything he has_ , _and she still turned away.

She can’t love him. If she loved him, she would have said yes. 

He can’t entertain the possibility that she shares his feelings, but left him anyway. 

He moves closer, slowly, like he’s approaching a spitting Loth-cat. It’s an apt comparison. Both the cat and Rey are equally likely to take his hand off. 

Heart thundering in his chest, Kylo reaches out to her. She shifts onto her side, murmuring in her sleep, eyebrows drawn together as whispers escape her parted lips.

“... Love you,” she murmurs. Every time she says it, his breathing hitches. It’s too close to what he’s dreamt of: pictured it alone in his bedroom; thought of her beside him always, their energies twined together in the force.

In his dreams, she says it first. 

Ben’s hand shakes as he extends his arm, the action so familiar. He’s constantly reaching for her — across star systems, across galaxies, across a burning room. 

Rey turns towards him, the ends of her hair inches from his fingertips. Her eyelashes brush against her cheekbones and he watches as she nudges into her own shoulder, tucking her chin to her chest. She sleeps curled into a ball, like she did on Jakku. When he closes his eyes Ben sees her, alone in her AT-AT with only a ragged doll for company, waiting for parents who will never return. 

She’s so close to him, closer than she’s been since they fought back-to-back in Snoke's throne room, and his hand brushes the frayed edges of her nightshirt. He can feel the heat that emanates from her, warmth bleeding into the fabric of his sheets. It’s the first time they’ve been slept in in weeks, and the thought that once the connection fades the impression of her will remain makes him dizzy.

It’s as though his fleeting idea reminds the force of its ephemeral nature. Ben ghosts the back of his fingers against Rey’s cheek and for a moment she leans into his touch unconsciously.

“Ben,” she sighs, the corners of her mouth lifting in something that's almost a smile. 

It’s so easy to pretend that she’s aware of what she’s saying. He can fool himself into believing that she welcomes his touch, welcomes his love, that this is her half-awake after she fell asleep waiting for him to retire. He can imagine that she wants to be with him.

The room goes silent, all of the air sucked out, and Ben watches helplessly as Rey fades in front of his eyes, the connection between them broken once more.   
  
When he climbs into sheets that still hold a trace of the scent of her skin, he closes his eyes and prays that for once, sleep will come easily. As he turns on his side, he feels her phantom touch against his back, the flutter of her breath against his hair. He tries not to hear the whispered _ I love you _ that is sure to haunt him for the rest of his life, but Rey’s voice is seared into his brain. He can’t escape her, now more than ever. He isn’t sure that he wants to. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello all!! sorry for the slight delay in updates; i had a lot going on irl but chapters should hopefully come more regularly from now on. still aiming to have this finished by tros!
> 
> hope you enjoy!

She sees his lightsaber first. The blade burns red amidst crashing waves, and Kylo Ren emerges from the mist, clothes sodden, water dripping from his face and hair. He presses forward, unmoved by the roil of the Death Star wreckage, and shifts his grip on his saber, pivoting the blade in a smooth backhanded turn as Rey watches his steady approach.

Swells crash against the Death Star and she stumbles back, searching for balance on the fractured metal. The waves roar waist-high and her boots slip as she fights for purchase against the churn of the wreckage, wanting to move but unable to gain footing. 

Kylo stalks ahead with unerring precision, steel glinting in his dark eyes as he bears down on her, and Rey snarls in fury. She rushes to meet him, wielding her saber like a club and bringing it down over her head in a two-handed grip. Their blades clash, once, then separate, sparks exploding from the contact, and the power behind the collision vibrates up her arms and sets her teeth on edge. 

Their eyes meet above the guttering sabers, and the ice blue of Anakin Skywalker’s weapon — her weapon, now — melds with the bleeding crimson of Kylo’s, violet reflecting in his dark gaze as he furrows his brow. She can’t help but be reminded of the first time they fought, and snow replaces turbulent waves as her mind transports them to the forest on Starkiller Base. She hadn’t known what was to come, the ways that the force would entwine her life with Kylo Ren’s and leave them unable to escape the bond that was formed without their knowledge as she pushed her way into his mind. 

They were enemies, then, her world still simple and black and white in its morality. He killed his father, and that meant he was lost to the dark and she was righteous and their fight amidst the trees wasn’t a duel but a bestowing of justice, and when she carved a scar through his flesh and nearly blinded him something inside her told her that she was _ good.  _ It didn’t matter that the voice that sang to her in the darkness held a darkness of its own, a black pit that told her to give into her anger and her hurt and her betrayal and finish the job once and for all while the planet’s foundations cracked around them and tore the ground apart. The force had separated them rather than allow her to kill him, and it ignites between them now, dancing in her blood and crackling like electricity in the air between them. 

The heat of their sabers dances like a flame against her face and Rey watches as the colours blend against Kylo’s pale skin,  _ bluewhitered _ flickering madly, setting his eyes alight. The last time they were so close, blades crossed in the snow, he promised to teach her, but their bond has made them equals. She has nothing to learn that Ben Solo has not already been taught. 

When she reached into his thoughts, his training became her own, the force connecting the gaps between what Jakku taught her and what the universe demanded she master. She knows the way he fights in the same way that she knows what scraps got the most portions, knows how he moves like she knows the path to the AT-AT she called home. 

He shouldn’t be able to surprise her, and yet he still does, pushing up into her blade and leaving her no choice but to break the hold, thrown back and pirouetting to avoid being overwhelmed.

She founders, tripping to a halt unnervingly close to the edge of the platform and staring down at the whirlpool below. Salt water sprays at her face, drenching her hair, beading on her eyelashes and plastering her clothes to her skin. The white fabric is thin at the best of times, and were it not for the heat of her saber and the blood rushing through her veins as they fight, she knows that she would be close to death from the cold.

Not like Kylo. Although his tunic is equally waterlogged, clinging to the width of his torso and showing off the thickness of his arms and chest, he has the benefit of layering. Rey has felt the warmth of his hand beside a fire, emitting heat across the galaxy from underneath the leather of his glove. She has seen him undressed, knows that beyond the armour of his clothing he is as pale as the delicate underside of her wrist, covered from the harsh desert sun by the protection of her armbands. He’s like that all over, masked and shielded from prying eyes. 

He is never masked before her. 

Standing motionless, half-turned away from him, Rey braces herself for the backhanded attack that is sure to come. She knows that were it her, standing before an enemy who is both winded and vulnerable, she wouldn’t hesitate.

But then he’s never really tried to hurt her.

She has always aimed first: on Takodana, on Starkiller, on Ach-To. Even here, in the eye of the storm that is the dark side, where his power should be strongest, she has been the aggressor. His moves have been defensive, beating her back, parrying strikes that he could easily overpower. He refuses to indulge her.

Fury rises in her chest like a tidal wave and she spins, catching him off guard with the speed of her movement. Her lightsaber is a blue-tinged blur as it cuts through the air like a scythe, and it’s only years of training that save him, throwing his blade up with a choked-off shout of what could be her name.

Still, Kylo won’t rise to her attacks. His blows are painfully slow, and she can tell even without their bond that he’s holding himself back in the force, nothing like the animal fury of his attacks in the throne room, when he took on three armed guards at once. He treats her like a child holding a training blade for the first time, indulging her attempts but denying her any real combat. 

She screams in frustration, spinning her saber in a vicious flourish and advancing on him as if he were a member of Snoke’s Praetorian Guard. She slams into him like a hurricane, and in the back of her mind she feels the ever-present wall between their minds fracture beneath the force of her onslaught. Their lightsabers clash, a shower of sparks erupting from the flurry of strikes, and Kylo’s eyes meet her own. 

“Why won’t you _ fight _ me?” she yells, arms trembling above her head. It’s so much easier to be angry, to sink into the emotions that Luke and the other Jedi call wrong. When she’s angry, she doesn’t have to think about the way her heart pounded in a ramshackle escape pod, how when she touched his fingers with her own the force showed her a vision only to cruelly rip it away, how for one shining moment everything she wanted most in the world was within her grasp. 

She grunts in frustration, teeth bared as she sets her shoulders and presses further into her strike, ignoring the burning in her joints and feeling the force like a wild thing in her veins. 

“Rey,” Ben says, desperate over the crash of the water. Her name on his lips sounds just like it did when he called for her in Snoke’s burning throne room. “I’ve never wanted to fight you. I don’t want to hurt you.”

She scoffs, bitterly, the salt-heavy air stinging her eyes and lips. 

“You had no problem with that when you chose the First Order over everything — over  _ me _ ,” she spits, and part of her relishes in the way he recoils, almost imperceptibly. A bigger part of her gapes open like a wound. “You hurt me every day and I can’t turn it off, and I can’t escape you even in the Resistance because everywhere I turn people want to ask the Last Jedi how she’ll defeat the _ mighty Supreme Leader  _ and they don’t know how it feels—”

She breaks off, tears welling in her eyes as she stares at him through the crosshatch of their blades. When she looks at him, really looks at him for the first time since Crait — not the masked figure displayed on propaganda posters and beamed across the Holonet, but  _ him: _ Ben, Leia’s son, the man who offered her the galaxy and told her she wasn’t alone, it’s like she’s looking at a ghost. 

His face is a mess of dark shadows and sharp angles, deep bruises under his eyes that mirror her own. She thought there would be change, that under the painstakingly-repaired mask his gaze would glow yellow, the way people whisper. They say that’s what happens to Darksiders, but the fact that underneath his throne and his mask and his layers Ben is unchanged tugs at some hidden part of her soul. He’s still in there. 

His eyes are the same, dark pools framed by a thick fringe of lashes. She’s stared into those eyes countless times, across battlefields and fires, seen her own future reflected back at her. They’re Ben Solo’s eyes.

The fight goes out of her all at once. 

He must see it in her face, because Ben’s blade blinks out of existence with the nudge of his finger on the ignition, and in the absence of friction Rey careens forward, dropping her saber on the metal of the Death Star ruins. She doesn’t care as it rolls wildly out of her sight.

She stops herself a hair’s breadth away from him, close enough that their chests nearly meet with the force of their panting breath. Even soaked, water coming off him in ribbons, his presence fills her with warmth. Before, she thought it was the heat of rage that filled her veins, but the bond that connects them hums with the glow of a banked fire, and she feels Ben’s mind brush against her own.

“Rey,” he repeats. Around them, the waves crash like thunder, but he doesn’t raise his voice. She’s close enough to hear him even if he whispered. “Rey, I’m in love with you.”

She can’t regain her footing. It’s like the world has been ripped under her with his words, like he’s reached into her mind and plucked out her most secret desire, the flame of feeling she cradles alone in the dark. The emotions she’s kept hidden for months overwhelm her: the longing, the yearning that fills her every time she watches Finn and Rose sneak off to dark corners, the way her heart aches when she brushes against the cut-off bond, fragile like an exposed nerve.

Ben reaches for her, like he’s done so many times before, and his mouth folds into a careful line as the column of his throat bobs. He touches her so gently, steadies her, folds his hands around her upper arms. They’re so big that they bracket her completely, the sodden leather cool against her exposed skin, and his palm covers her armband completely. Beneath the buckle, her scar smarts with awareness. 

“Palpatine is back,” he says, rolling his lips together. “I’ve felt it. And I won’t let him do to you what Snoke did to me. You can’t turn to the dark.”

She scoffs, once.

“You asked me to join you, Ben, when you knew I wouldn’t. You  _ wanted _ me dark.”

He sighs deeply, ducking his head. He’s so much taller than her that it just brings him nearer, and they stand curved into one another like two orbiting stars, breathing together. 

“I didn’t want you dark. I just wanted you. I still do.”

His face is inches from her own, dark eyes meeting hers steadily. He’s never been able to hide his emotions, their bond betraying his true feelings even when he does his best to mask them. Rey feels it all, the tangled web of his mind unravelling before her with the slightest caress as she reaches out between them.

He’s terrified. Of Palpatine, of her, of one day waking up and realising he no longer feels his mother in the force. The role of Supreme Leader bears down on him like a rock and he dreads each day, every meeting with Hux, but he feels like there’s no way out, no solace from the life he’s carved out for himself with pain and anger and fear; he trusts no one, waits for the day when a vibroblade finds itself buried deep within his side like he waits for the changing of the hours. 

He could turn to the Resistance, of course, but why would they help him? His mother has no faith in him and no reason to have any, his uncle and father are dead by his hand, and the ranks of rebels are filled with First Order defectors who would have his head as soon as he emerged from his ship.

Not that he feels he deserves anything less. 

The one bright spot in his mind is their bond. Even the vaguest of nudges from her mind sustains him for days, and at night in his bedchamber he lies on his back on a still-made bed and relives the touch of her fingers against his own.

The depth of his feelings shock her, the intimacy of it, the way he thinks of her with a mix of awe and adoration.

“Ben,” she says softly, drawing back from their connection. “I…”

His eyes drift shut at the sound of her voice and he leans into her even further, his nose nearly brushing her cheek, and when he breathes her hair flutters against her face, blown back by his exhale. They’re so close that Rey can feel his heartbeat as if it’s her own, thudding in her chest. 

Words escape her. What can she say, when he knows her mind as well as she does? There’s nothing she can hide from him — nothing she  _ wants _ to hide from him.

When she closes the gap between them and presses her lips to his, the bond flares to life between them, and she feels the rush of Ben’s emotions like a flower blooming in her chest. His hope and disbelief and unadulterated love flow through her on a wave of feeling and she deepens the kiss, bringing her arms up to brush against his face, his hair, tangling at the back of his neck as she presses her body against him. 

It feels like the end of something and the beginning all at once, something the force willed into being long before either of them were aware of the other’s existence. It feels like coming home.

Around them, the storm quietens. The water stills, and as the wreckage of the Death Star stops roiling wildly the rain ceases, the sky slowly brightening. When they break apart, it’s hard to believe that mere minutes ago they were surrounded by treacherous waves.

“We’ll fight him,” she says. “Palpatine. We’ll do it together.”   


The faint smile that spreads across Ben’s face — the first one that she’s seen — warms her like the sun, peeking out from behind the fading storm clouds and painting everything softly golden.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you so much for reading! comments and kudos are greatly appreciated <3 
> 
> updates should hopefully be fairly regular, as i definitely want to get this finished before tros. in the meantime, you can follow me on twitter [here!](https://twitter.com/bensreys)


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